Electronic devices, including portable electronic devices, have gained widespread use and may provide a variety of functions including, for example, telephonic, electronic messaging, and other personal information manager (PIM) application functions. Portable electronic devices include, for example, several types of mobile stations such as simple cellular telephones, smart telephones, wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers with wireless 802.11 or Bluetooth capabilities.
Portable electronic devices such as PDAs or smart telephones are generally intended for handheld use and ease of portability. Smaller devices are generally desirable for portability. A touch-sensitive display, also known as a touchscreen display, is particularly useful on handheld devices, which are small and have limited space for user input and output. The information displayed on the touch-sensitive displays may be modified depending on the functions and operations being performed. With continued demand for decreased size of portable electronic devices, touch-sensitive displays continue to decrease in size. In addition to the touch-sensitive display, electronic devices often include a keypad to input commands or information.
Some electronic devices use piezoelectric elements or disks to provide haptic feedback to a user of an electronic device via, for example, a touch-sensitive display. Typically, piezoelectric elements have a conductive layer or shim and a piezoelectric material layer. In one known actuator assembly, a set of four piezo disks are disposed within shallow wells formed in a support plate. Flexible conductive leads are coupled to both the shim and the piezoelectric material layer of each piezoelectric element via, for example, conductive adhesive, soldering, etc. Such flexible conductive leads are susceptible to cracking, which can result in electrical arcing, poor mechanical response and/or insufficient tactile feedback. Additionally, coupling the flexible conductive leads to the both the shim and the piezoelectric material layer significantly increases manufacturing complexity and costs.
Thus, it is desired to provide an improved piezoelectric actuator apparatus while reducing manufacturing complexity and costs.